Transcript: Kerry, Hatch

Aug 30, 2009

Page 5 of 17

So what we need to do is have people who want to sit down and not
be bound by ideology, not be the prisoners of a political strategy,
but who want to get health care done based on the best way to get
it...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move to...

KERRY: ... done. If we did that, we'd get it done.

HATCH: Can I make a point on that?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Very quickly.

HATCH: You know, that's one of my points that I've been making,
is that Utah is not Massachusetts, neither is any other state.
Massachusetts is having a very, very difficult time because of the
costs involved in their program. But it is their right to do that.

Utah has one of the best health care systems in the country, most
people agree with that, as does Minnesota. Because -- and I think the
demographics in each state are different. I think if we give some
flexibility, we might be able to have a better -- a very good...

STEPHANOPOULOS: We have to move on to another...

HATCH: ... health care system.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Another issue that...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. Let me move to another issue that came up
earlier this week. The attorney general decided to investigate
possible CIA abuses in the prisoner interrogation cases.

And Vice President Cheney this morning has blasted that decision
by the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: The approach of the Obama
administration should be to come to those people who were involved in
that policy and say, how did you do it? What were the keys to keeping
the country safe over that period of time?

Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers
who gave us the legal opinions, threatening, contrary to what the
president originally said, they were going to go out and investigate
the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: He called it an outrageous and possibly
dangerous act.

KERRY: Well, Dick Cheney has shown through the years, frankly, a
disrespect for the Constitution, for sharing of information with
Congress, respect for the law, and I'm not surprised that he is upset
about this.

The Obama administration has no intention -- I think the
president himself has been unbelievably bending in the direction of
trying to be careful about what happens to national security,
protecting our national security interests, being very sensitive about
the CIA's prerogatives and needs and so forth.

And in fact, I think there is a little bit of a tension between
the White House itself and the lawyers in the Justice Department as
they see the law and as what their obligation is.

And in a sense, that's good. That's appropriate, because it
shows that we have an attorney general who is not pursuing a political
agenda, but who is doing what he believes the law requires him to do.

And we have an administration, on the other hand, that is
balancing some of those other interests.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The vice president also said that he believes
that CIA officials who went outside the bounds of the guidelines they
were given were justified. Do you agree with that?

HATCH: There is a real question whether they went outside of the
bounds that they were given at the time. Look, I -- as the longest-
serving person in the Senate Intelligence Committee, I've got to tell
you, we don't want to cripple our ability to be able, in very crucial
times, to get the information we've got to have to save our country
and to protect our people.